Police searching for man accused of beating woman, stealing her car

Collinsville police are investigating reports that a woman was carjacked and beaten by a man in two parking lots in Collinsville, but that she may have known her assailant.

Police were called to the Moto Mart on Bluff Road at 10:10 p.m. Tuesday on reports that a woman had been physically beaten and her car stolen. The woman, who was not identified by police, told investigators that she had backed her vehicle into a parking spot at Walgreens when a black male got into the car on the passenger side and told her, “I’m not going back to jail; take me to East St. Louis.”

The woman said that she first drove south on North Bluff, then made a U-turn and drove to the Moto Mart for help. At the gas station, she said the man began to hit and bite her, and she began to scream with the hopes of getting help from bystanders.

Some people who witnessed the scene have posted on social media, indicating that they heard the woman repeatedly hitting her horn. Witnesses told police that the man fled the scene in the woman’s car: a gray 2016 GMC Terrain with Florida license plates that was later recovered at 13th Street and Gross Avenue in East St. Louis.